It's sad.. The security at the Super Bowl got as much airtime as the Super Bowl itself and we have wifi passwords in plain text broadcast and idiots getting arm and arm with players at a presser.. Way to go security theater..

Of course, this victory elevates Pete Carroll to the elite ranks of coaches, one of the all time best. Yet something about it just doesn't seem right. Even the margin of victory was simular to jimmy Johnson's. Not to mention it happened in New Jersey.

wildcardjack:I've heard from more than one ex-truther that their belief in conspiracies came down when they stopped smoking pot, which was my one misgivving about legalization.

Now, the conspiracy to crimalize it in the first place, and the existence of for-profit prisons shows for even the sober man.

But one can easily see the road that lead to criminalization and for profit prisons, it doesn't take some crazy secret shadow government for that stuff. Killing your own people in a secret plot that someone has yet to come out about, doesn't have such an obvious road.

wildcardjack:I've heard from more than one ex-truther that their belief in conspiracies came down when they stopped smoking pot, which was my one misgivving about legalization.

Now, the conspiracy to crimalize it in the first place, and the existence of for-profit prisons shows for even the sober man.

There's enough research to suggest the primary motivator for believing conspiracy theory claims is simple mistrust of authority. Though simple, it's often such a profound mistrust of authority that conspiracy theory adherents have been shown to believe in fictitious conspiracies (anything that isn't the "official" story, even if it's made up my researchers) or believe in mutually exclusive conspiracy theories (two separate conspiracies that both cannot be true at the same time, e.g., "Osama bin Laden was killed shortly after 9/11" and "Osama bin Laden is still alive" are likely to be believed by the same people, because both mean that the announcement of his death by Seal Team 6 was a lie). This is often why conspiracy theorists also tend towards believing in paranormal and pseudoscientific phenomena - the stereotypical protective tin foil hat, for example, but also more traditional paranormal and pseudoscience stuff like ghosts/spirits and creationism. They pretty much just believe the opposite of what authoritative sources say is more likely to be true, whether government (especially government) or academic or medical sources. At least, until an authoritative sources says something they agree with, often in direct contradiction to another authoritative sources (e.g., medical sources contradicting what government authorities say, or something).

To make the connection to smoking cannabis, there's two reasonable connections I can think of. One, there is a pretty well established link between ingesting cannabis and acute psychotic symptoms. I'm relatively sure they are short-term and only last for the duration you are high, and they aren't necessarily present in everyone who ingests cannabis, but some people are susceptible to experiencing psychotic symptoms as a result from ingesting cannabis. Two, considering the disproportionate stance by our government against cannabis - one that truly does not make scientific or medical sense nor is it a philosophically sound position (morally, ethically, rationally) or a sustainable position - it could just be another thing that helps prove to them how absolutely untrustworthy authority is.

I forgot who I shamelessly copied these from, but it was a farker, probably pocketninja, and I found it so amusing I copied it into a doc I call "Other People's Stuff":

BUSH: So, what's the plan again?

CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.

RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.

CHENEY: No, Don, we won't.

RUMSFELD: We won't?

CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.

RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?

CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Don. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.

BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we just blow up the Towers. Clearly, we also need to shoot a missile at a small corner of the Pentagon to create a mightily underpublicized additional symbol of international terrorism -- and then, obviously, we need to fake a plane crash in the middle of farking nowhere in rural Pennsylvania.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, it goes without saying that the level of public outrage will not be sufficient without that crash in the middle of farking nowhere.

CHENEY: And the Pentagon crash -- we'll have to do it in broad daylight and say it was a plane, even though it'll really be a cruise missile.

BUSH: Wait, why do we have to use a missile?

CHENEY: Because it's much easier to shoot a missile and say it was a plane. It's not easy to steer a real passenger plane into the Pentagon. Planes are hard to come by.

BUSH: But aren't we using two planes for the Twin Towers?

CHENEY: Mr. President, you're missing the point. With the Pentagon, we use a missile, and say it was a plane.

BUSH: Right, but I'm saying, why don't we just use a plane and say it was a plane? We'll be doing that with the Twin Towers, right?

CHENEY: Right, but in this case, we use a missile. (Throws hands up in frustration) Don, can you help me out here?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, in Washington, we use a missile because it's sneakier that way. Using an actual plane would be too obvious, even though we'll be doing just that in New York.

BUSH: Oh, OK.

RUMSFELD: The other good thing about saying that it was a passenger jet is that that way, we have to invent a few hundred fictional victims and account for a nonexistent missing crew and plane. It's always better when you leave more cover story to invent, more legwork to do and more possible holes to investigate. Doubt, legwork and possible exposure -- you can't pull off any good conspiracy without them.

BUSH: You guys are brilliant! Because if there's one thing about Americans -- they won't let a president go to war without a damn good reason. How could we ever get the media, the corporate world and our military to endorse an invasion of a secular Iraqi state unless we faked an attack against New York at the hands of a bunch of Saudi religious radicals? Why, they'd never buy it. Look at how hard it was to get us into Vietnam, Iraq the last time, Kosovo?

CHENEY: Like pulling teeth!

RUMSFELD: Well, I'm sold on the idea. Let's call the Joint Chiefs, the FAA, the New York and Washington, D.C., fire departments, Rudy Giuliani, all three networks, the families of a thousand fictional airline victims, MI5, the FBI, FEMA, the NYPD, Larry Eagleburger, Osama bin Laden, Noam Chomsky and the fifty thousand other people we'll need to pull this off. There isn't a moment to lose!

BUSH: Don't forget to call all of those Wall Street hotshots who donated $100 million to our last campaign. They'll be thrilled to know that we'll be targeting them for execution as part of our thousand-tentacled modern-day bonehead Reichstag scheme! After all, if we're going to make martyrs -- why not make them out of our campaign paymasters? shiat, didn't the Merrill Lynch guys say they needed a refurbishing in their New York offices?

RUMSFELD: Oh, they'll get a refurbishing, all right. Just in time for the "Big Wedding"!

FLMountainMan:I forgot who I shamelessly copied these from, but it was a farker, probably pocketninja, and I found it so amusing I copied it into a doc I call "Other People's Stuff":

BUSH: So, what's the plan again?

CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.

RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.

CHENEY: No, Don, we won't.

RUMSFELD: We won't?

CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.

RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?

CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Don. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.

BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?

RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!

CHENEY: Of course, just toppling the Twin Towers will never be enough. No one would give us the war mandate we need if we ...

Well we had a good run, us folks in the government conspiracy labs. But after this guy blew our cover last night, we know it's time to throw in the towel. That was some fine detective work there and some damn good reporting too, I tip my hat to this gentleman. In the coming days you will all soon know exactly who was behind 9/11, why, and how Osama bin Laden is really just an elaborate Muppet created in the 70s. Jim Henson started the whole thing.